


not burning for you

by 1sleepydormouse (AlderBee), AlderBee



Series: saturnine [8]
Category: Archie Comics, Archie Comics & Related Fandoms, Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Aftermath of trauma, Demon AU, Discussion Of Murder, F/M, I don't know what kind of ending this is, discussion of suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-09-14 11:33:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16912119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlderBee/pseuds/1sleepydormouse, https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlderBee/pseuds/AlderBee
Summary: Was Betty beyond saving?The low laughter was like a dark melody, wrapping itself around Betty’s heart, caressing her skin, as the demon took a step out of the summoning sigils. “I don’t think ‘being saved’ is in the cards for you, sweetheart.” He played with the strands of her ponytail, almost reverently as he twisted his fingers into the mass. “That train has left the station.”





	not burning for you

**Author's Note:**

> I know nothing about demon summoning. Most of the items noted below were pulled from blackwitchcoven.com and the Supernatural Wiki (LOL, my inner researcher weeps at my source choices).

It wasn’t supposed to hurt this much.

 

All of the stories, all of the songs. They spun stories and dreams about life being full of happiness and love. Sharing joys with family and friends. No cares or worries.

 

The American Dream.

 

Betty felt numb to it all. So many years of hating herself, hating her life. Innocence and trust burned out of her. Escaping through her tears, her blood, her sweat.

 

Her desperate pleas for mercy.

 

No one ever fucking listened.

 

And now they were going to pay.

 

Her whole body ached. Her skin felt alive with razor sharp cold. Her breath was scalding and dense in her chest and throat as she stood in the basement floor of an abandoned parking garage.

 

The building around her looked like it was summoned straight out of a horror movie, framed with dark shadows, thick weeds, and abandoned vehicles. Vulgar messages were spray painted into the broken concrete.

 

Anger and misery was permanently tattooed into the very heart of the structure. It seemed fitting. It felt worth the hours of slowly exploring the entire structure to find this one place, clear of any graffiti or broken parts.

 

Fingers caked with chalk, Betty looked at her work. A large Circle, ringed with the Divine Names, a triangle centered within it. A black candle burned at each corner of the triangle, the sharp scent of cloves stinging her nose and eyes. A heavily worn book, filled with latin incantations lay open at her knees where she kneeled.

 

She wanted to laugh at herself. Betty was a logical person. She studied, did her reading, trusted facts. Trusted that in the grand scheme of things, good would always win out.

 

And here she was. Over the edge. Clearly crazy. Desperate.

 

With nothing to lose.

 

She was just so tired. Something had to break.

 

And maybe it had to be her.

 

With a hollow, dry sob, Betty climbed to her feet, dirty shoes scuffing the ground as she approached her circle. Flipping open a switchblade, she gripped her ponytail, long blond hair falling in waves to the center of her back.

 

To summon a demon, you had to sacrifice something of your own.

 

Her long hair was something to hide behind. A security blanket. She wouldn’t have that any more.

 

Maybe she wouldn’t need it any more.

 

Reaching up, she gripped the base of her ponytail, pulling it taut before sawing at it with the knife. The knife wasn’t meant for hair, yanking at strands that brought sharp tears to her eyes, making her nose water. Gritting her teeth, Betty determedly mangled her hair, feeling the strands slowly give away before she found herself with a fist full of hair, tied neatly at the top with a hair band. 

 

The shaggy, uneven strands of her blond hair fell in irritated strands against her neck, cheeks, and chin.

 

Betty felt insane.

 

Now she looked it.

 

Wiping her nose on the sleeve of her jean jacket, she carefully placed the ponytail at the center of the circle, carefully stepping back to her book without breaking the chalk marks on the concrete.

 

Placing the blade by the book, she dropped both hands on the open pages, her fingers moving to the single incantation that brought this whole idea to life. Betty always had an affinity for languages. French, Spanish, German, and a little bit of Icelandic. The thought of speaking something that the people around couldn’t understand was appealing to her. A layer of protective comfort and mystery that kept her most intimate thoughts from them. Kept them from using her fears or passions against her. Her diaries were written in a hodgepodge of languages, the lines hobbled together through the assistance of dictionaries and online language interpretation websites. The jigsaw of Spanish, French, Hangul, and long-dead hieroglyphics looked beautiful. Like madness in art form. Passionate.

 

Now, that passion enabled her to carefully enunciate the complicated Latin, printed like blood on the skin-thin pages. With each line, she could imagine the heat from the candles intensify. The ground shake with each syllable that fell from her throat.

 

The whole world felt silent, an empty shell for her voice to echo throughout time and space.

 

The earth seemed to flex around her, shifting to make her and this ceremony its core.

 

Her throat was sore and tight after the last syllable, feeling disconnected from her body as she stared at her hands pressed against the dirty, concrete ground, knuckles white with deep red lines. Beyond the sound of the blood pounding in her head and the heavy gasps of her breath, she could hear nothing.

 

But . . .

 

But she wasn’t alone.

 

Slowly, Betty brought her eyes up, tracking an invisible line from the inverse spine of the spell book to the rudimentary chalk lines (solid despite the tremors in her fingers), past the dull glow of candle light . . . to the figure that reclined in the center of her Circle.

 

Her breath caught in her throat, heart stilling as she took the figure in.

 

This . . . thing. This demon, or something, looked like a boy. He didn’t look much older than her with long limbs, creamy pale skin, tight dark jeans and what looked like a dark hoodie under a black jacket. From his Converses to the lopsided hat at the top of his dark head, he could have been mistaken for anyone at her school. Any one in town.

 

She found herself pinned in place as she looked into his eyes, the only feature that revealed his true nature. His dark pupil was slitted, surrounded by concentric rings of gold, reds, and oranges. His eyes were other worldly, framed by full lashes and what looked like laugh lines.

 

Betty shivered. The demon smiled, a smirk really, flashing perfectly white teeth, a thin plumb of smoke rising from the corner of his lips.

 

She scratched her nails against the ground, scraping her fingers as she formed fists. It didn’t escape her notice, her position before this creature. While they were on common ground, his presence towered over her, filling the massive garage floor, while she kneeled before him on numb legs, back bowed in the face of his power.

 

Something was wrong.

 

Something was very wrong inside of Betty.

 

As the demon stretched and climbed to his feet, her hair secure in his hand, rolling his neck and brushing invisible dirt from his clothing, Betty didn’t feel any fear or worry. No doubt or regret for her actions.

 

She felt nothing.

 

That wasn’t supposed feel right (but strangely, it did).

 

Was Betty beyond saving?

 

The low laughter was like a dark melody, wrapping itself around Betty’s heart, caressing her skin, as the demon took a step out of the summoning sigils. “I don’t think ‘being saved’ is in the cards for you, sweetheart.” He played with the strands of her ponytail, almost reverently as he twisted his fingers into the mass. “That train has left the station.”

 

“W-, who are you?” Betty asked watching him approach.

 

“God, you’re dumb,” he sighed, pocketing her offering before stopping a short foot from her knees. He smiled, towering over her and not making eye contact. “Very few risk a summoning without having a particular name or demon in mind. Just requesting any ole’ demon?” He full on grinned, showing all of his gleaming teeth. “That can go very, very bad for you.”

 

It was a clear threat. This could very literally be the last few moments of Betty’s life, but she found herself undeterred. Unworried.

 

He tilted his head, still grinning. “Lucky for you, you’re cute.”

 

A fat lot of good that did for Betty. A spark of rage grew under her ribcage, and she wanted more than anything to leap to her feet and, just, scream into his face. Didn’t this fucker - this demon - know that shit like looks and vanity caused so many problems? The number of people that tormented her because of her looks. All of the expectations. All of the assumptions. The dangers that drilled into her time and time again because of how “cute” and “delicate” and “unassuming” she was. 

 

The good daughter. The goody-two-shoes. The prude. The slut. The ass kisser. Naive. Bitchy. A victim. A liar.

 

She was so tired of being hurt . . . being used by people’s assumptions of her. 

 

She didn’t need this demon to do it too.

 

The demon in question seemed to brighten with the spiralling progression of Betty’s thoughts, letting out a whoop of laughter that echoed around them. “And  _ spunky _ ! This is my lucky day!”

 

Betty found herself completely speechless. Weren’t demons supposed to be scary? Dark and menacing? So far this demon acted as mature as the body he currently had: immature and random. This was just some sadistic punk with a touch of ADHD.

 

“Well, I am an ageless being,” he shrugged, seemingly unperturbed of her thoughts. “When you spend eons messing around with stupid humans, and dealing with their petty tantrums, you learn to just take your joys when you can.”

 

Well, at least one of them was happy.

 

Suddenly exhausted, Betty dropped her head to stare blankly at the pages of the summoning book, barely illuminated by the candles. 

 

What in the world was she doing?

 

What did she even want?

 

Before this moment, all Betty wanted was for something to change. She wasn’t exactly looking for a good change. She was beyond that. After days, weeks, months of feeling sad and hurt and hollowed out, she wanted - no,  _ needed _ \- something to change. 

 

Darker thoughts seemed to surface much more often. The people, all the monsters who found some kind of sick joy in her suffering . . . she wanted them to hurt too. She wanted them feel her every waking moment  _ intensified _ . It was what they deserved. Betty craved it.

 

She was beyond feeling guilty about it.

 

Thin fingers cradled her chin, surprisingly warm as they tilted her head up. The smile was gone from the demon’s face, eyes still wild and terrifying. He considered her face seriously, searching for something that her apparently transparent thoughts weren’t revealing to him.

 

“Do you want me to do that, sunshine?” he asked. “Do you want me to make those boys hurt like they hurt you? Do you want me to eviscerate those girls that torment you?” Leaning closer, Betty could feel heat radiating from his very form, dry and scalding. “Do you want me to make your family wish they had never wronged you?”

 

It was all so horrible. Monstrous and vicious. 

 

Betty wanted all that. 

 

She craved all that.

 

She deserved all that.

 

“Please,” she breathed. “Please.”

 

“Mmmmm,” he leaned in and ran the tip of his nose from behind her ear, down along her neck, breathing against her. “Your sacrifice to me-”

 

“I’ll give more. I promise. I can give more. Just please. Please help me.”

 

The demon’s manic grin returned in full, colored with dark pleasure. “Oh, my dear. I can promise you so much more. Give me your soul, swear your soul is mine, and I will be yours. A dark Hellhound that will do your every bidding. I will do anything to please his mistress.”

 

For the first time, Betty felt inexplicable relief, tears burning in her nose and stinging her eyes. An ally,  _ finally _ , someone in her corner. No longer alone.

 

His hand slid back and gripped at the cropped hairs at the base of her skull, keeping Betty trapped in his arms. She didn’t struggle as his slips followed the path his nose had taken, deviating across her chin and cheek to delicately rest at the corner of her mouth. Lust bloomed in Betty, feeling him brush against her with each breath.

 

“Promise me, Betty.”

 

“I swear, Demon. I swear. I promise my soul to you. Be my Hellhound. Be mine.”

 

He shuddered, eyes widening with glee. “Your wish is my command, Mistress.” And he took her promise with teeth, tongue, and pressure.

 

Betty opened beneath him.

 

No longer alone.

 

The demon’s mistress.

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Demon Summoning. Betty is pushed over the edge after a traumatic event (which followed after years of bullying and a lack of family support). I didn’t go into detail about it, so interpret as you will. Title of the fic was pulled from Birdy’s “Let It All Go.” I don’t think I’ll ever NOT associate these two with a song when I write! XP


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